MIT SENSEable City Laboratory/ARES Lab: Flyfire

A swarm of mini-helicopters make for a revolutionary digital display.

Published on Feb 22, 2010

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MIT's SENSEable City Lab and Aerospace Robotics Embedded Systems Laboratory aka ARES Lab have teamed up to create Flyfire, essentially, a flying cloud of mini helicopters that individually act as pixels and together, work as a revolutionary new three dimensional display of digital information.

The digitally controlled mini-copters each contain small LEDs and can be choreographed into three dimensional, free-form digital displays.

Recent advances in battery technology and wireless control have helped to make Firefly possible. According to the Firefly site, "It aims to be a step towards 'smart dust'— the idea that computing is becoming increasingly smaller, addressable, pervasive - and persuasive."